In financial disclosures released on Tuesday, Trump reported earning more than $1bn last year from his several cryptocurrency ventures.

All told – including other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets – Trump made at least $2.2bn last year, as opposed to the roughly $622m his businesses raked in in 2024, before he returned to the presidency.

In other words, it’s a fair guess that last year he made more than $1bn off his presidency.

We’re talking big money and big looting.

For example, Trump embraced crypto as a candidate in 2024. Then he and his family invested like mad in it – through CIC Digital, a Trump Organization affiliate that is behind his memecoin, $Trump, and through another Trump family-backed crypto company, World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Trump, his sons and the family of the special envoy Steve Witkoff in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign (but which the White House says Trump has divested from). World Liberty is now behind several prominent crypto tokens.

The problem here is more than potential conflicts of interest, more than the mere appearance of conflicts of interest.

Since taking office, Trump has installed friendly regulators to oversee digital assets, and he’s pushed for landmark crypto legislation that would further free crypto from being treated as a security (in which case all sorts of disclosures would have to be made about it).

These deals make it........

© The Guardian